malcb
TFF member
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Post by malcb on Apr 10, 2012 20:40:02 GMT
Delighted to see that a book on "Fash" is available online at Amazon - check it out - and with 3 5Star reviews and a thorough analysis of his time at Torquay - the ideal present for yourself!
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Dave
TFF member
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Post by Dave on Apr 11, 2012 16:25:12 GMT
Delighted to see that a book on "Fash" is available online at Amazon - check it out - and with 3 5Star reviews and a thorough analysis of his time at Torquay - the ideal present for yourself! Is this the book that was written by his daughter? she was on the J.Vine show a while ago and talked all about her dad and I'm sure she said she had written a book. |
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Rags
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Posts: 1,210
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Post by Rags on Apr 11, 2012 17:29:29 GMT
Delighted to see that a book on "Fash" is available online at Amazon - check it out - and with 3 5Star reviews and a thorough analysis of his time at Torquay - the ideal present for yourself! Is this the book that was written by his daughter? she was on the J.Vine show a while ago and talked all about her dad and I'm sure she said she had written a book. You're reading the wrong Forum, Dave.  Jim Read wrote the book drawing on some material provided by a regular contributor to this site, amongst others. www.dbpublishing.co.uk/buy/justin-fashanu-the-biography_12161.htm |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2012 18:30:30 GMT
Jim Read, the author, posted on this site a while back asking for memories of Justin Fashanu’s time at Plainmoor. To this effect the Torquay Fans Forum gets a mention on the acknowledgements page.
David Thomas is also acknowledged. No doubt his observations were rather better-informed than my own at the time.
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Post by iowjim on Apr 12, 2012 9:59:58 GMT
I’m the author.
Thanks to those of you who responded to my request for your memories and anecdotes a few years ago. You provided me with some good material. I hope I’ve done justice to it.
Thanks also to Nick House for the quote from his When Saturday Comes article in which he described Justin Fashanu joining Torquay as ‘A meeting of a desperate footballer and a desperate club’. The meeting seems to have worked for a while and provided some memorable moments. I enjoyed researching that period – it certainly wasn’t dull.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2012 9:06:25 GMT
"A meeting of a desperate footballer and a desperate club”...
Well, that’s certainly the way I saw it at the time When Saturday Comes invited me to write the first of two articles about Justin Fashanu. Of course, history records we have been more desperate before and after those times.
The context was that we were actually struggling in the league above the one in which we normally play. It was December 1991 – just eighteen months after Mike Bateson had purchased Torquay United – but the new owner was already starting to realise that owning a football club could be a challenging business. After promotion in 1990/91 – itself an up-and-down campaign which saw a managerial change – John Impey quickly departed in the autumn of 1991. Wes Saunders was now in charge soon to be joined by John Uzzell who had sustained his injury in the league game immediately before Justin Fashanu made his debut for Torquay. In the meantime we’d lost to Farnborough in the FA Cup.
Here was the league table prior to Fashanu’s debut:
16 Fulham 18/22
17 Bradford City 19/21
18 Reading 18/20
19 Swansea City 18/20
20 Wigan Athletic 19/18
21 Darlington 18/17
22 Bury 18/17
23 Torquay United 19/17
24 Chester City 19/16
It was an eventful start for Fashanu with a sending off at Fulham on Boxing Day – Craven Cottage at Christmas, imagine! – followed by winning goals against Exeter and WBA. This led to an improved league position by mid-January and, I guess, we were all rather pleased about Justin Fashanu playing for us. It’s twenty years ago now but take a look at the teams below us:
16 Preston North End 24/28
17 Torquay United 25/27
18 Hull City 24/26
19 Swansea City 22/26
20 Bury 24/26
21 Bradford City 25/25
22 Darlington 24/25
23 Wigan Athletic 23/23
24 Chester City 24/18
The improved form didn’t last and we were relegated finishing in 23rd place with Ivan Golac coming and going during this period. Thereafter Justin Fashanu remained at the club until the end of January 1993 having become assistant manager to Paul Compton. The league table – back in the fourth tier now of course – didn’t look too promising at the time of Fashanu’s last game for us (just the twenty-two teams that year). Time for Messrs Warnock and O’Riordan:
16 Darlington 24/28
17 Scunthorpe United 22/27
18 Halifax Town 25/25
19 Hereford United 24/24
20 Torquay United 25/23
21 Northampton Town 24/20
22 Gillingham 24/19
That’s the bald, statistical details of Justin Fashanu’s spell at Plainmoor. For more depth I’ll make an unashamed plug for Jim’s book which tells the story far better than I can. In a near two-hundred page book there’s a good fourteen pages relating to the player’s time with us.
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